Happily Ever After After All
by Hi Ho Gandalf Away
Summary: Set about three seconds after the ninth book ends, here is the handkerchief for everyone who cried when Ghastly and Anton and Gordon copped it.


**Chapter 1:**

Valkyrie opened the door, Xena at her heels. Skulduggery was leaning against the doorframe, arms folded, head cocked. Fletcher was visible halfway down the drive.

"About time you decided to come back. Tanith's been engaged for nearly a year now but she refuses to get married without you in the audience," he said.

"Tanith got engaged?! To who?!"

"You'll see."

She glowered at him as they started down the drive. "Don't make me hit you on my first day back."

He chuckled.

They reached Fletcher. "Hi, Val," he greeted.

"Hi Fletcher, who's Tanith marrying?"

He grinned. "You'll see. Hey, what's the dog's name?"

"Xena."

They teleported to Gordon's porch, Xena whining her distress at the unfamiliar sensation. The house was dark and quiet, the sun not yet up.

Valkyrie crouched down and comforted her dog. " I guess I'll see you two at the Sanctuary later,' she said. "Right now I gotta sleep off the jetlag."

"See you, Val." They teleported away.

She straightened up, took a deep breath, then opened the door and flicked on the lights.

"SURPRISE!"

Valkyrie squawked in amazement as the light revealed a crowd of her friends (including Skulduggery and Fletcher, who had teleported in), party decorations and a banner that read WELCOME BACK VALKYRIE!

Tanith came forward and gave her a hug. "Nice to have you back."

"Thanks. Who's your fianceè?"

Tanith laughed and moved aside to let her see.

Valkyrie's jaw dropped open, and for two seconds she forgot how to speak.

"Hello Valkyrie," said Ghastly Bespoke. "Miss me?"

Valkyrie shrieked and enveloped him in a bear hug. "Ghastly! Ohmygod you're not dead! How are you not dead? When did you stop being dead?" She spied another familiar face, and gave its owner a hug. "And Anton Shudder's also not dead!"

Skulduggery had a smile in his voice, "Gordon's back as well."

Valkyrie spun round, and shrieked again when she saw Gordon. "Gordon! Oh, I wish I could hug you!"

The ghostly figure of her uncle grinned. "I never told you my last words, I had to come back for that."

Valkyrie laughed in delight. "What are they?"

Gordon frowned and said, "I have no idea", prompting a ripple of laughter around the room.

The next morning, after feeding Xena and saying hi to Gordon, who was busy on yet another posthumous work, Valkyrie headed over to Roarhaven to meet the new sorcerers and discover how they managed to recover Gordon's consciousness and bring Ghastly and Anton back to life. She parked the Oompa-Loompa behind the Bentley and entered.

"Morning Valkyrie," said Tipstaff, "nice to have you back."

"Morning Tipstaff, nice to be back," she answered. "Where's Skulduggery?"

Tipstaff pointed. "In the Repository, he wants to introduce you to the people who brought back Shudder and Bespoke."

"Thanks."

Inside the Repository, which was bigger than she remembered, Skulduggery was watching six young sorcerers were shifting shelves and re-arranging artefacts. There was a lanky boy with black hair and blue eyes who was dressed in jeans and a blue T-shirt; a tall, blonde, blue-eyed boy in grey; a slim black-haired girl with dark violet eyes clad in reddish-brown; an African boy with spiky white hair, golden eyes, and a twisted gold hoop in his left ear, dressed punk-style in blue jeans, black T-shirt and black leather waistcoat; and two red-haired girls with green eyes in dark green, obviously sisters. They were introduced respectively as Blue Tamburlaine, Sensitive; Falcon Wolf, Shapeshifter; Raven March, Illusionist; Dirk Iceman, Teleporter; Carnelian River, sigil worker; and Phoenix Diamond, Elemental.

"You can call me Phee," said Phoenix, and took a pen and small, leather-bound notebook from her pocket. " Can I have your autograph?"

"Sure." She signed her name on the page indicated, amongst Tanith's and the Dead Men's. "So, how did you guys manage to save Ghastly and Gordon? And Anton Shudder?"

Phee, although the youngest, was spokesperson. "Well, it starts way back when Car used to be one of China Sorrows' apprentices - she wanted to replicate the library and make it better. Now a while before that Dirk had discovered a ginormous cavern under the Antarctic ice sheet, which was converted into a giant archive cum magic-science lab cum headquarters by us and a bunch of other sorcerers who liked the idea of a completely neutral base. In about five years our little group of weirdos had amassed thousands of magical books and artefacts, lots of which we carefully copied from China's collection, and written a whole bunch more. We call it Haven."

"There's also a lake with an island that's home to a whole colony of Crenga," said Blue, "and each one is a genius in a specific field."

"Yes. Shush. So, just before the war between the Sanctuaries, Blue started getting messages from Davina Marr - his branch of Sensitive magic being talking to dead people -, who said that she could finally remember who had told her to destroy the Sanctuary. She said it was Erskine Ravel. We didn't believe her at first (except Blue, who says that dead people can't lie), but we started spying on him, just in case."

"Good thing you did," said Valkyrie.

"Yeah. Anyway, when we discovered that Marr was telling the truth, we started planning how to stop him with minimal casualties. Unfortunately, we didn't have a lot of time, and the best we could do without raising suspicion was the occasional extraction."

"Which is why so many people went missing during the war," explained Skulduggery.

"Yup. They're all back now. Anyway, in Ghastly and Anton's case, we made clay models of them, avatars…"

Blue spoke again, "Actually, Phee made them, she's just being humble."

Phee glared. "Stop interrupting. Where was I?"

"You made avatars…"

"Right; and then, through a long, complicated process we basically, well, transferred their souls from their bodies to their avatars."

"But how did you bring them back afterwards?"

"When the avatars were destroyed, they were technically dead until we could reanimate their bodies, but after that they came back, unharmed and with no memory of the switch. Or the

afterlife."

"It seems that's the norm for souls who come back from the dead," butted in Blue. "Which is a tad annoying, because I had to explain what was going on twice instead of just once."

Raven March punched him on the arm and hissed, "Be quiet and let Phee finish!"

"Thank you, Raven. We had planned to bring them back before the war ended, but their bodies were turned to stone to stop them decomposing and it took a little longer than expected.

"Gordon was different. His Echo-stone was wiped, but not fully; his consciousness was still linked to it. As a result, Clit - a Crenga with an aptitude for computers - managed to, well, reboot the Echo-stone. D'you want to see Haven?"

"What, now?"

Phee shrugged. "No time like the present."

Carnelian was tapping sigils on her inner left forearm. "Hold it guys, I just need to find the last of the power crystals, it's gone walkabout." She finished tapping and a blue arrow on her palm glowed blue and twisted to point at a pile of small boxes on one of the lower shelves. She rooted about in the pile and found a small silver box, like what would hold a ring. She checked the contents, made a triumphant sound, and put the box with five others on a nearby shelf. She turned back to the group. "Done. Shall we go?"


End file.
